Meath hit hardest as GAA ban 16

Meath and Dublin's preparations for the forthcoming All-Ireland championships have been thrown into disarray after eight players…

Meath and Dublin's preparations for the forthcoming All-Ireland championships have been thrown into disarray after eight players from both teams were handed lengthy bans by the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC).

Five Meath players and four from Dublin will be sidelined for eight weeks, while a further three from Meath and four from Dublin received lesser suspensions of four weeks.

Meath have been hit hardest by the proposed suspensions, the timing of the punishments meaning coach Colm Coyle will be missing five of the players involved the ugly scenes at Parnell Park for their championship opener against Carlow on May 18th and a potential second round match on June 1st.

Team captain Brendan Murphy, Seamus Kenny, Niall McKeigue, Shane McAnarney and Nigel Crawford have all been sidelined for two months. They will be joined by Peadar Byrne, Caoimhin King and Darren Fay for the first four weeks.

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Dublin manager Paul Caffrey must contend without Ciaran Whelan, Paul Flynn, Bernard Brogan and Dermot Connolly for two months, meaning all four will miss the Leinster champions clash with Louth on June 8th.

Paddy Andrews, Ross McConnell, Tomas Quinn and Eamonn Fennell were the players to receive four-week bans, ruling them out of this weekend's NFL Division Two final but, crucially, not the Louth match.

The Dublin and Meath county boards have also been fined a record €20,000. The CCCC considered video footage and referee Paddy Russell's report yesterday and informed the boards of its decisions this morning.

The Dublin GAA board has said it will not be appealing the fine, while a Meath spokesman explained that "officials are likely to meet tonight to decide on their response."

The Dublin board also apologised for the part its players had in the "unseemly scenes" that resulted in five players, three from Dublin (Andrews, Brogan and Whelan) and two from Meath (McKeigue and McAnarney), being shown red cards by Russell.

Four of the players were dismissed after a large scale scuffle broke out between the teams with just four minutes on the clock.  Whelan was dismissed soon afterwards for striking Meath defender Kenny in the face. Eleven yellow cards were also shown in the game.

GAA president Nickey Brennan has said he was "disgusted" by the incidents.  "It is time that leadership stood up, and responsibility was taken, for the actions that we saw (on Sunday)," said Brennan.

"It was appalling, it was unacceptable, and I'm absolutely disgusted with it. I don't know what we have to do to get the message across to these people, that presenting our games is important, because we want to make sure we attract future generations to our games. And yesterday's events did nothing to help us in that regard."

Meanwhile, the GAA has announced that Division One final between Kerry and Derry, scheduled to take place on Sunday at 2.15pm in Parnell Park, will be an all-ticket affair.